The disposal of medical waste is a significant concern from an environmental perspective. Medical waste, which is often infectious, is currently sterilized and relegated to many lifetimes in a landfill. Even though many components of medical waste are considered recyclable, these components are not reused for fear of contamination from the infectious materials and the stigma associated with medical waste containing infectious matter. This results in the waste of tens of millions of pounds of otherwise recyclable materials and occupies valuable space in landfills.
Medical waste can include sharps containers (both used and unused), plastics, metal, glass, syringes, rubber, paper, fabric, blood, pathogens, and other infectious materials. The medical waste components are usually comingled within a waste container. Sterilization can be carried out by a number of techniques including, but not limited to, autoclaving, gamma irradiating, exposure to ethylene oxide, exposure to microwaves, exposure to radio-frequency waves, exposure to high temperatures, and combinations of these techniques. Many of these techniques are not particularly desirable, as they can leave an unpleasant smell, traces of blood may still be seen, and the physical properties of the sterilized plastics can be altered. Therefore, the choice of sterilization technique can have an effect on the ability to reclaim and recycle the resulting sterilized material.
Recycling plastics is a fairly common practice where the plastics are from benign sources. However, plastic comingled with infectious waste typically is not recycled into useful products, especially not into medical devices. U.S. Pat. No. 5,833,922 describes a method for processing medical waste using radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation to obtain reclaimed plastic and refuse-derived fuel; however, there is no description of use of the reclaimed plastic in medical devices other than sharps disposal containers, possibly due to the limited efficacy of using radio-frequency electromagnetic sterilization to sterilize the plastics. It would be desirable to provide more efficient and efficacious methods of separating, sterilizing and reclaiming plastics from other materials commingled with infectious waste. Aside from limitations inherent in the radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation to sterilize plastics commingled and contaminated with infectious waste, there is a lack of coordinated efforts to reclaim and recycle plastics commingled with infectious waste. Thus, while recycling techniques such as the type described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,833,922 exist, it is not believed that such techniques have been used to reclaim plastic for use in medical devices. Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide improved systems and methods for the coordination of such reclamation and recycling efforts. Therefore, there is a need to develop methods of reclaiming and recycling useable material from infectious medical waste into new medical devices.